In the UK Chinese investors have snapped up prestige names including Sunseeker motor yachts, Hamleys and House of Fraser store groups and the Odeon cinema chain.
HOW MUCH? $50,925 base; $56,025 as tested with the $5,100 Prestige package (including navigation system, premium Bose sound system, LED daytime running lights and rear-view camera).
But just as the format was making its way up from exploitation films and into prestige productions — including Columbia's "Miss Sadie Thompson," starring Rita Hayworth, and the MGM musical "Kiss Me Kate" — the bottom dropped out of the market.
Carl Weinberg, chief economist of High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York, noted that the United States had suffered other blows to its prestige recently, including revelations of Internet spying by the National Security Agency and indecisiveness in dealing with chemical weapons in Syria.
With most kids returning to school this week, the autumn movie season now kicks off with the arrival on Friday of prestige fare including Joe Wright's Tolstoy adaptation Anna Karenina and John Hillcoat's prohibition-era crime saga Lawless.
He worked for ITV and the BBC throughout the 1960s, mostly as an art director/production designer on prestige shows including Out of This World, Armchair Theatre and the BBC Sunday Night Play.
He returned to the South in 1959-60 to make the first stereo field recordings of American music; 19 albums were released on Atlantic and Prestige Records, including the first recordings by the country bluesman Mississippi Fred McDowell.
But instead of just going after the prime waterfront land in Dubai that secures the bonds, QVT and other foreign creditors said last Friday that they would consider suing Dubai World in British and local courts for its prestige properties, including its ports and foreign real estate assets held by the conglomerate's investment arm, Istithmar.
From afar, it looked like prime Oscar bait: Tulip Fever boasts a grade-A prestige cast including Academy Award winners Alicia Vikander, Christoph Waltz, and Judi Dench.
It was the last of NBC's great if often struggling prestige comedies, including "The Office" and "30 Rock" (whose godchild "Parks and Rec" can be said to be), that once made Thursday night a date worth keeping.
